The Only Prompt Engineering Guide You'll Need to Bookmark

You asked for everything I know about prompting in one place: here it is!

Over the past year, I've written dozens of posts about prompt engineering—deep dives into specific techniques, comparisons of different AI models, advanced strategies for complex tasks. And consistently, week after week, I get the same request in my inbox:

"Nate, can you just summarize everything you know about prompting in one clear post? Something I can bookmark and actually follow along with?"

The request usually comes with a qualifier: Some readers are complete beginners who feel overwhelmed by scattered tips and tricks. Others are already getting good results but know they're missing something. And many of you are somewhere in between—you've had both brilliant successes and baffling failures with AI, and you want to understand why.

So this is that post. Everything I've learned about prompt engineering, organized from the absolute basics to advanced techniques, all in one place. If you've never written a prompt before, you can start at the beginning and work your way through. If you're already comfortable with AI, you can jump to the sections that fill your gaps. And if you're looking for that one definitive guide to share with your team or bookmark for reference—this is it.

I've structured this to be both a tutorial and a reference guide. Read it straight through to build your skills systematically, or jump to specific sections when you need them. Either way, you'll have everything you need to turn AI from a frustrating puzzle into a reliable tool that actually saves you time.

I’ve structured this around three key pieces:

1. The Beginner’s Handy Guide: An introductory post in the substack that lays out how to get started and introduces my two longer guides (below)

2. The Complete Beginner’s Guide: An in-depth guide to prompting aimed specifically at beginners, updated for 2025!

3. The A-to-Z Prompt Engineering Guide: A desk reference guide to prompting, including dozens of pages on advanced prompting techniques, including team-level insights

When I say everything guys, I mean everything.

But first things first, let’s start with the fundamentals and build from there…